The year of letting the hell go - Liam Sharma
It’s 3 AM. I’m rolling around this club PEEL in the depths of Fitzroy, Melbourne. I left all my friends high and dry for a 6-foot-2 Australian purebred I’m pretty sure was named Josh. He was wearing like a lace string necklace with a fake scratched pearl, an RTD-stained white H&M tank top that was two sizes too small and had been whispering compliments about how beautiful he thought my accent was. I purrrrred and smelt his shitty cologne. He gave me flutters.
I had come to Melbourne for work and stayed to party and see what I could devour. In the months prior, I had been mulling over uplifting my idyllic Surry Hills gay boy lifestyle/swag for the colder weather, sewage rivers, high school drum teachers and men with stick and poke tattoos, everything Melbourne had to offer. I was low-key suffering from pretty bad body dysmorphia. I didn’t like leaving my house unless I was off my mind, I had put too much filler in my cheeks, and I looked like a duck - I’d wake up and quack at myself every morning in the mirror.
Something needed to change, and unlike previous precarious moments in my life, I was adamant I would do just that. Head first, claws (stubbs) out, I refused to enter another year of my life feeling half of myself. I wanted to squeeze life out like a yoghurt stick and lick the bottoms of the baggy. I wanted to be happy.
I realised that the boundaries I had set around myself in the act of autonomy and health were cages that kept me from feeling. I had built forts in my mind to keep me in line, clean and crisp - and they had suffocated, itching for spirit, floating around in a mundane corpse. I didn’t eat before noon because I was always fucking fasting, didn’t socialise because being alone was considered healing or an act of self-love or whatever. If one more person barked at me that solitude was the best form of company, I would have shat myself. I thought routines were the foundations of robust mental health, and being so tightly attached to them and strung up was the key to winning life’s rat race. My shoulders were so tight you could smash glass on them and I wouldn’t even flinch.
I thought I was polishing myself to perfection, but I was really sweeping everything away that sparked the twinkle in my eye.
I had become a squeaky clean version of myself. A cut out of the environment I was living in. I couldn’t see the wrinkles on my cheeks (filler really works, guys) or the disco lights in the backs of my eyes. So, I let go. I recentered myself. Went home and squeezed my niece and told her it was us against the world. Took myself to therapy. Started sprinting and started screaming. I sat on my sister’s balcony drinking Dirty Vodka Martinis for hours, looking out to the world as the sun kissed the moon, and for the first time in 18 months, a dragon tear dripped down my cheek as we cried about nothing and everything. We missed grandma. The last time I recorded a tear was over a straight boy that didn’t love me in 2021. I started to tell my friends I loved them; sometimes I’d text them, and other times I’d just drop it into conversation as if it was nothing. I’d come home, force myself to smoke a J and dance, and wail to Eugene by Arlo Parks in the mirror like a nutjob. I chewed through 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think by Brianna Wiest, and as I’d shakingly highlight entire pages in fluorescent green, I’d smile and think, why the fuck has this taken me so long?
Because here’s the thing, when you willingly force yourself to stay in your lane, do as you’ve been instructed, do what is suitable for everyone else around you, so much so that you assume it’s right for you, when you’ve found comfortability in the normality, and everything feels okay because it’s not crumbling down, when you’ve got exactly what you expected and life’s all in order and wrapped up neatly in a bow like a present under a Christmas tree, there will be nothing inside to open.
As a kid (nine or so), I vividly remember being the happiest when I’d wait for my mum to go for her weekly Saturday morning coffee and strut with her friend Cathy. I’d wait for her to leave, then I’d pinch a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet and bike to the Takapuna movies. I was chubby and unfit, so I’d walk my bike up any hills, but that’s beside the point. It was an act of rebellion. I relished it. I would fly down the streets, throwing inhibition to the wind; all I knew was I wanted a large popcorn with a frozen coke combo, and I’d catch whatever was showing. I didn’t give a shit about what was playing.
I was the king of my own tiny universe. It might have been filled with mouldy red carpet, and the seats always had gum on both sides that you’d scratch off your clothes with a blunt knife when you got home and the popcorn was always ice-cold - but it was all mine, and no one could tell me how to behave. It was before phones, before people could reach me, it was before people used to lock their bikes up. I’d sprint up the yellow stairs of the movie theatre and hiss at the girl behind the counter for a ticket and a combo. I’d usually finish the popcorn during the opening credits and give myself the worst brain freeze trying to drown my pre-pubescent sorrows in a froco. I didn’t have many friends as a kid. And I liked that. I went to the movies alone on a Saturday morning, and as the opening song would blast through the crackly, broken cinema speakers, all the hairs on my arms would rise; I could feel my stomach warming up as if I was roasting in an air fryer, my shit grin smile stretching from side to side as if it was about to fall off my face as all my organs french-kissed. I’d think to myself; this really was it. And in those very moments, I felt truly happy. I had everything I wanted.
As I’ve grown up, I haven’t been able to replicate that warm feeling as much. Happiness. But here I was, in the middle of some underground dungeon/gay rave/nightclub/pigsty(?) with the boy with the pearl necklace, getting goosebumps. It was a slow realisation that I was feeling happy at that exact moment. At first, I thought it was just the tequila or whatever he bought me from the bar that had given me a euphoric feeling, but it stayed. Even long after I gave him the boot from my friend’s flat the next morning, and it’s been with me ever since.
I’ve found some form of happiness in the last few weeks, and it’s really beautiful. On the eve of my 27th birthday, I can only look back and feel proud of myself about where I now am. I have a beautiful, tiny home with enough vitamin c serums in my vanity to keep me glowing throughout the apocalypse. I have a job that stimulates and challenges me. I have a community around me that warms me. I have blue cheese and cheap vodka and stale BBQ Sakata crackers. I have debt, a crushing student loan, tax issues that could so easily swallow me whole. I have crushes, flaws, and bumps on my back and on my bum. I have broken promises, disappointments and estranged friendships that keep me up at night.
I have the twinkle back in my eye.
Sometimes I battle with myself that everything will come crashing down around me at the drop of a pin. That I will lose this feeling again, not to be seen for another 15 or so years. That happiness isn’t ingrained in my DNA, and this too shall pass because I am not worth it. I don’t deserve to have what I’ve built, and this next year will truly be the worst of the worst. The guilt consumes me for a few minutes. The anger that I can now cry and feel and bend enrages me. Being in limbo without a routine unnerves me. Everything is starting to sliiiiiiiiip, and then I snap back, almost giving myself whiplash.
Because I’m a fucking grown arse human now. Seriously, I’m 27. My collagen is degrading. Hangovers last weeks. I’ve been cut off, lmfao. The only person who unequivocally has my back is the same person I quack at in the mirror every morning. Kiddy wheels off; it’s go-time. I will take everything that comes my way that feels like the first sun on my back after a long winter. I will go out clubbing with my friends until the lights turn on, and all I can see is deer light eyes, human possums and strawberry crush vape smoke in the air. I will have the career I want. I will cry, kick, and allow myself to love another person more than myself. And there may be days that won’t feel like I am shitting sunshine or when I’ve lost my compass, and all signs are pointing down scary south. I won’t be able to feel happy forever, it’ll lose the sweetness, but I’ve got a taste for it now. I’ve given too much, lost even more; I’ve been selfish, generous, stupid, smart, weak and at times resilient. I haven’t felt it all, but I sure as hell will; all it’s going to take is me letting go.
Words — Liam Sharma
